As good as any other, catching his breath under an ash tree on a new-mown lawn-if he remembers anything, He 11 remember the sun flowing the length of his arm before flaring out Into a slider no one could touch all afternoon. He 11 remember his no-hitter as precisely And firmly as I remember spoiling it, and neither of us is wrong. Seaver has his stats, And the rest of us are stuck with rearranging, cutting And mixing, working day and night, in dreams, in the dark of a warehouse Stacked with the daily, disintegrating rushes of 20 and 30 and 40 years ago, Trying to make it right, remixing, trying to accommodate what happened with what Might have happened. And it never turns out true, The possibilities not to be trusted but, rather, Believed in against the facts-whatever they are: the low liner hanging Long enough for the left fielder to dive for, tumbling, And the graceful pop-up To his feet, the ball visible, clearly, In the webbing of the glove held High over his head, the third out, the proof That this, ah, yes, this is what happened, the fans in his memory standing, Roaring in disbelief, and the lovely applause lasting till he's off the field. . house are paragons of insect sanita- tion. A credit to their species." "Well," the exterminator said, "this stuff kills all your silverfish, too. And beetles." He settled back on his haunches as he came to the bottom of the bookcase and looked over at Avery. "It kills spiders. Your small bugs. Those little centipedes. The ones peo- ple call doodlebugs." "Spiders, " Avery said. "Good. That's fine. That's O.K. But what about the flies? Who will kill the flies?" He closed his eyes in a long pause. "We have a lot of flies here in the summer." The exterminator was readjusting his cannister so that he could low- er himself enough to reach up into the fireplace. "I don't know much about flies," he said with some effort as he peered up into the vast field- stone chimney. He drew his head back out. "I just started this job. I got laid off at the printworks. They just don't have the business they used to." -ARTHUR SMITH . "That's too bad," Claudia said. "I'm so sorry." It was all there was to say, but it made her daughter flinch. Avery lay back on the couch again while the exterminator reinserted his torso as far as it would reach into their chimney. Noone in the room said anything more. But then the man called out from inside the chimney.. "Hey," he said, "do you know what's in here?" They watched him as he put down his cannister and slowly backed into the room with Avery's hunting rifle. He brought it down into the room with a puzzled expression and held it out to show them. He had found it on the inside ledge of the fireplace, where Claudia had hidden it. The winter before, Claudia had taken the gun from Avery's closet and slipped it in among his golf clubs, but when spring came and the golf course reopened she remembered to move it She had for- gotten all about it after that, however, and A very had never missed it, or never said so. 43 Claudia and A very and Jane stared back silently at the exterminator. All of them were at an absolute loss, until Avery gestured broadly in Jane's di- rection. "Y ou have to keep those things away from children, you know," he instructed the man earnestly. The man gazed back at him a mo- ment without comprehension, and he turned to Jane with curiosity. She was a tall girl for an eleven-year-old-not really a child anymore. A very noticed that glance and gave the exterminator a secretive, melan- choly look, twisting his mouth to one side and cocking his head. He gestured again toward J ane-a small indica- tion, just a sad turning of his hand. "N ot quite right, you know," he said in a parody of a whisper. "Doesn't have both oars in the water, if you know what I mean." By now, Avery was almost leering with intrigue, and he turned sideways to Jane and gave her a slow wink. The exterminator looked at A very for a moment, with the gun flat out in front of him in his two hands. Finally, with a good deal of trouble, he maneu- vered himself back into the fireplace and replaced the rifle where he had found it. Then he left the room to spray the kitchen. Jane studied her half-eaten sand- wich. When she looked up, she saw her parents catch each other's eye and quickly look away. They didn't glance at Jane, and they didn't speak at all. Quietly, Jane got up-her mouth was tucked in at the corners, and the skin over her cheekbones was pale and taut with fury and terrible embarrassment -and went upstairs and packed her things. She had decided to go over to Diana's after all. She had decided to make every effort to spend the whole night there. Jane carried her backpack out into the yard across the grass, and she was beyond the lawn before the door fell shut behind her. Inside the house her parents didn't say a word. They sat in odd solemnity, so still and quiet, while the exterminator sprayed insecticide around the kitchen cabinets and un- derneath the stove. -RoBB FORMAN DEW . BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! [From the Salem (Ore ) Statesman-Journal] Legislators are drowning in tax propos- als while scrambling to find some miracle life raft to appease government s Moby Dick appetite